“The Testaments” Costume Designer Leslie Kavanagh on Building Gilead’s Chilling New Generation

Helmed by Mike Barker, the first season of Hulu’s The Testaments (Season 1’s finale airs on May 27) picks up some years after the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, in a renewed Gilead. Alas, this picture-perfect, plastic-free world is still a dystopian patriarchy, home now to a younger generation who have never experienced the outside world. The season focuses on Agnes (Chase Infiniti), the adopted daughter of high-ranking Commander MacKenzie (Nate Corddry) and his second wife, Paula (Amy Seimetz), as Agnes hits puberty and, according to Gilead code, becomes ready for marriage.

Agnes’s life revolves around Aunt Lydia’s (Ann Dowd) academy, where Lydia and the other Aunts guide Gilead’s elite, illiterate daughters in wifely instruction, and visual cues to this society lie in its uniforms. In a voice-over, Agnes explains her world: known by their colors, the little girls are Pinks, the teenagers are Plums, and the girls who have fully reached adolescence (no longer a given in either Gilead or the outside world) are the Greens. Newly arrived converts, the Pearl girls, are all in white, a reminder of the alleged purity Gilead can bestow upon them, and yet, so easily stained. The Aunts rule from a perch in drab brown, while high-ranking wives are set apart from one another in greens and teals, all custom-dyed by costume designer Leslie Kavanagh.

In addition to dyeing, Kavanagh, who also designed the costumes for the final two seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale, used fabric choices and deeply considered details to bring variation to totalitarian uniformity. Paula, Agnes’s stepmother, owns and rides a horse—Kavanagh gave her a practical yet modest full blanket-skirt that could hook into the rest of her riding gear. The effect is both beautiful and another reminder that these women are trapped in a totalitarian society. We spoke with Kavanagh about streamlining looks for Gilead’s younger generation, using fabrics to denote hierarchy, and making purple work for the camera.

Was color a starting point for your process?

Gilead is an established place, based on a hierarchical system, with colors as visual cues of your status. I designed the last couple of seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale, and in season five, we introduced the Plums. When we got to The Testaments, where it’s now all about this, it was so exciting to figure out how to do a complete world this way. Purple is a tricky color to have on camera. Obviously, we’re trying to make a beautiful show here, so using different hues, shades, and silhouettes in the actual uniforms helped break that up. We also have the Pinks and the Aunts, and we do get to have a few colors. But the purple was really important—often purple’s associated with royalty, and these are our crown jewels of Gilead, our young ladies in training to be the next generation of wives.

What was your process like for assigning characters different hues of the same color?

There was a lot of thought put into how to balance these colors. Even if I buy existing fabric, I will then dye it again to make it a bit more of a special color for the show. Whether I bump it up into a warmer tone or bring it down to a cooler tone depends on what I want to use the fabric for. I had a little more flexibility with the blouses we see the girls wearing under their pinafores because, for our hero cast, all their blousing is dyed specifically for each girl, so it really highlights their skin tones. When all of our girls are in a group environment, they all have their own special moment on camera. 

As the Plums become Greens, did the same approach carry over?

With the Greens, it was the same thing. The ball sequence was amazing for me. It was really challenging, but it was so rewarding because I got to custom-build even for our background performers, all the dancers, and all of our hero cast. And I’m building multiples of these dresses, because of sweat. And it was, again, making sure that each girl had their own special green, but also their own special fabric because I try to signify who’s a little bit of a higher-standing Commander’s daughter. Agnes is the one we consider our most elite, and she gets the finest fabrics. We’ve established that Gilead is able to procure stuff from the outside world, and when we’re doing her details, her finishes, and her tailoring, everything’s just a little bit extra because [her family] has the means. Becka’s really our only girl that’s not the daughter of a Commander. I can’t help but make it fabulous, but she has to toe the line a little differently. She’s not going to get the same forgiveness that daughters of high-ranking Commanders might, and I wanted to make sure her fabrics were just a little less luxe for special occasions. 

How did you approach the silhouettes for the ball?

My life for a button, a bow, a zipper, a buckle! But alas, in Gilead, it’s not allowed. I like to have underlying themes to what I’m doing, for myself and for the actors. The green ball was so special. Quyen [Tran] was an amazing director. Her vision was so unique. One of the key components I had to factor into the dresses’ aesthetics was that they had to have a swirliness to them, because we were doing these beautiful overhead shots, and she wanted to see all the dancers moving and the dresses swishing and swirling. I really had to be cognizant of that when I was buying fabrics and with the design. How do I design for all these people without repeating? That was my challenge. With our uniforms, we have different elements to hopefully showcase that our girls are growing, blossoming, and blooming. For me, the ball was more about potentially flying away with their Commander and starting their own journey. [For a] loose play on wings, the capelet gave me that sort of flavor and feel. Each girl had their own special fabric, their own shade of green. As a costume designer, this show is such a dream. You get to build all the time—there is no Gilead store. Everything’s made to order.

The way the fabric appears must also play into their status.

Agnes, for example, has all these Marthas, so her clothes would always be impeccable. There are no frays, rips, or tears, or if something does tear, they’re not mending it. She’s getting new. Whereas somebody like Becka has no Marthas because she’s not the daughter of a commander, so probably her mom is mending that for her. Of course, at Aunt Lydia’s school, you can’t step out of line. Everything’s got to be beautiful, meticulous, and perfect.

What was the approach to the Guardians?

At the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, Gilead was crumbling more and more. They’ve had to rebuild themselves, and there was a lot of death and destruction amongst the old brigade. We wanted to take it back to having our guardians be these younger, handsome fellas that are tempting our girls in a way that they’re not supposed to be tempted, of course. They are a military faction within Gilead, but they’re not soldiers of an army or navy. We wanted to streamline the costumes to showcase the physique a little bit, showcase that they’re a little bit younger. We do have some older men to make sure that we see some continuity of bringing the elders of Gilead forward. We didn’t want to say that the world has been wiped out of every person that’s over a certain age, because that’s not accurate. But these cute guys hanging around all the lovely ladies, what kind of trouble is going to ensue from here?

It’s such a shift from The Handmaid’s Tale.

We were able to establish a different sort of vibe on The Testaments, which was amazing. We’re now looking from the inside out, where they don’t know anything. One of my favorite scenes we shot was when the girls were all playing tag in the park, and we saw them being really free, bonding, and having fun. And then the camera slowly pans over, and you see these legs dangling, and these Guardians are hanging. I was very cognizant of wanting to make sure my costumes looked beautiful against this ugliness at all times. The girls are playing, and they’re just like, “They deserved it. You know, they were obviously bad.”

How was shooting in Canada?

I have a stellar team, and I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without the people that I surround myself with. Everything you see was designed by me and created by my crews.  I have people living here from other countries, but they’re all locals here in Toronto, where we shoot. I can’t say enough great things about my crew.